Page 79 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

lxxii H A M L E T

that he did not join the King's company till three years
after Shakespeare's death. That, however, is no reason
for doubting that Betterton inherited the tradition of the
original performances.
Hamlet was one of the plays allotted to D'Avenant for
the Duke's company by the warrant of December 12,
1660; but there is no record of his producing it before the
summer of 1661. Pepys saw it at 'the Opera' (the
playhouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields) for the first time on
August 24 of that year, 'done with scenes very well, but
above all, Betterton did the prince's part beyond imagi-
nation.' He saw it again on November 27 and Decem-
ber 5, 1661, on May 28, 1663 ('giving us fresh reason
never to think enough of Betterton'), and again on
August 31, 1668, when he was 'mightily pleased with
it; but, above all, with Betterton, the best part, I believe,
that ever man acted.' Pepys had a great admiration for
Hamlet. On November 13, 1664, he 'spent all the
afternoon with my wife within doors, and getting a
speech out of Hamlett, To bee or not to bee" without
"
book.' A setting of that soliloquy to music for a single
voice (possibly composed by Matthew Locke and ar-
ranged for the guitar by Cesare Morelli) is among the
Pepys manuscripts at Magdalene College, Cambridge;
and it has been (perhaps not altogether fancifully) sug-
gested that the music may to some extent represent the
intonations given to the speech by Betterton on the stage
(the corruptions in the text may or may not be due to the
same source). Evelyn did not share Pepys's enthusiasm.
When he saw the play on November 26,1661, he only
remarked that 'the old plays begin to disgust this refined
age.' But Pepys rather than Evelyn seems, in this case,
to speak for the age, which was slow to show its disgust
with Hamlet. 'No succeeding Tragedy for several
Years,' wrote Downes, 'got more Reputation, or Money
to the Company than this.' Betterton's acting of the part
was praised by Downes, by Colley Cibber, by Rowe, by